


Rhapsody in Red and Green and Wings

by necrora



Category: Justice League
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/necrora/pseuds/necrora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wally is good at a few things in his life, like being thoughtful and introspective and generally pretty intelligent, and knowing how to make an awesome cup of mocha. He’s also pretty good at telling when people fall in love with each other around him—but for being the fastest man alive, he’s pretty slow at recognizing his own feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rhapsody in Red and Green and Wings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



Wally is good at a few things in his life, like being thoughtful and introspective and generally pretty intelligent, and knowing how to make an awesome cup of mocha. In _outer space_.

He takes credit for only one of those things. People think better when they’re walking, and he can walk a _lot_ in a very short amount of time. And he does concurrence really well. He notices a lot of things at once, thinks about a lot of things at once. These aren’t require for being a thoughtful person, but it’s got to help.

So that moment, when he sees Hawkgirl watching the Earth from one of the wide windows spanning the wall of the space station, and her wings droop for a fraction of a second, and he notices it at the same time he whips to the kitchen, whips up an iced mocha, and whips back to Hawkgirl, holding the glass out to her with a grin—he only takes credit for his mocha, for the way she smiles at him.

“Thanks, Flash,” she says, a little pleased, a little puzzled, like she herself doesn’t recognize the sadness that Wally sees in her, well, more often than he’d like.

And as that moment ends, Wally absently thinks, _that’s my smile,_ because he’s labelled every single smile that his colleagues have (even Batman!) and that one from Hawkgirl just now was designated the Flash Smile From Hawkgirl; and almost before he _begins_ that thought, Wally thinks, _I love you_.

The shock of it propels him back, chokes him, and the next moment he’s standing on top of the Pyramid of Giza, wondering what the hell just happened.

 

::

 

It’s John who comes to find him.

“You know you just ran through space?” John asks him, mildly, as he leans against the wall of the Pyramid. “You _almost_ snapped my force field before you got safely inside the atmosphere. Warn a guy first.”

“Oh,” Wally says. He’d wondered how he’d even made it to the Earth. He’s fast, but not that fast, and he can’t run in a vacuum. Maybe. Maybe if he launched himself fast enough, the force would be enough to get him from the station to the Earth before he suffocates. Bats could calculate that for him.

( _Concurrent_ thoughts.)

“Gonna tell me what happened, buddy?” John asks him, and he sounds concerned about Wally now—as if shielding Wally as he unconsciously and madly dashed out of the space station wasn’t enough—and suddenly it’s about a hundred times worse, because Wally loves Hawkgirl.

And so does John.

 

::

 

Wally goes to see if he’s in love with Batman.

It makes sense. In his head.

Because he knows why he _admires_ Hawkgirl: she has that presence, that strength, that no-hesitation pound-her-way-to-justice attitude—and the glimpse of a good heart underneath it all. Wally’s awed by her, and not only because of her mace.

And, Wally reasons, he’s kind of awed by Batman, too. Batman has the same sort of presence and strength, and he’s definitely bossy and justice-y. Less of a good heart, come of think of it, but Hawkgirl hits harder than Batman does.

Point is that Wally probably loves Batman, too. He just needs to make a cup of mocha for him, and maybe Batman’ll grunt or something, and then Wally will end up on the Great Wall of China or whatever and all his problems will be solved.

“What do you want, Flash?” Batman asks. He’s sitting by the controls of the space station—Wally knows about what three of those buttons do, and maybe John knows about five of them and Diana six, but nobody else knows anything else about all the complicated controls other than Batman—and he doesn’t sigh, but Wally gets the feeling that he wants to.

“Uh,” Wally says, because he hasn’t thought this through. “Do you want mocha?”

“I don’t drink coffee,” Batman says.

“I could make it decaf,” Wally offers. Any moment now, he’s going to fall in love.

“I don’t drink coffee,” Batman says.

“I could—orange justice?”

“What do you want, Flash?”

Sometimes, Wally’s not entirely sure Batman isn’t a robot. Or at least, whether Batman isn’t on autopilot when talking to him. Batman usually repeats the same small words several times when he talks to Wally.

“I’m wondering how fast I need to be, to get from here to the Earth,” Wally says. “Like, do you think that’s possible? Or would I be too slow? I mean, if I’m going fast enough, the momentum should throw me, right? I wouldn’t even need to run in space, I’d just need to put my arms down and hold still. Or—”

“It’s not a scientific impossibility,” Batman says.

“Right,” Wally says, nodding widely. “Scientific impossibility. Gotcha.”

Batman takes his eyes off the controls for the first time. “The practical issue would be whether you’d have enough room in here to get the momentum,” he says. “John would be happy to make a platform for you, if you’d like to try.”

“What,” Wally says, caught, and, “No, no, it’s fine, it’s—I don’t want to bother John. Hey, you want mocha? Or a banana smoothie? I make awesome protein smoothies. You look like you work out, you work out, right? I mean, it’s not like you’re like Supes, you don’t have magical powers or anything.”

Batman never tells anyone to get lost. It’s not because that would be rude. It’s because nobody ever does it fast enough for him, so he just gets up and does it himself.

Wally leaves a cup of strawberry banana smoothie by his seat, anyways. It’s not like it takes him a long time.

 

::

 

The thing is.

The thing is: it’s not like Wally hasn’t been attracted to Hawkgirl all this time. What isn’t there to appreciate? Wally can knock out Lex Luthor’s guns _and_ duck away from Ultra-Humanite’s bullets _and_ appreciate Hawkgirl beating the shit out of Star Sapphire all at the same time. Hawkgirl is hot. Hawkgirl is awesome. Hawkgirl’s punches are second only to Wonder Woman, and she hits with a goddamn spiky mace, which just adds to the sheer brilliance that is the beautiful woman with wings and a snarky voice that Wally could listen to all day—and so often does, like the day they went monkey-hunting together.

“They don’t have monkeys where I come from,” Hawkgirl says, as she rattles the wall of the cave, trying to draw them out.

Wally already checked the other end of the cave, but he didn’t see any monkeys and it was getting dark, so he came back. “Flying monkeys, though,” he says, happily. “C’mon, don’t tell me you’re not excited.”

“Flying monkeys that’s been stealing from the nearby nuclear center,” Hawkgirl reminds him, but she’s smiling her Flash Smile again.

“We’ll run if the radiation gets to be too much, love,” Wally says, and lets her walk in front of him, because she’s less of a pussycat than he is in dark caves filled with angry monkeys, and because he can get in front of her before she even blinks, if necessary.

Hawkgirl just rolls her eyes and holds her mace out as she stalks forward, and Wally hums, thinks about how useful it’d be to have John’s shield around them just now—Green Lanterns were having their conference meetings, or something, or maybe John’s grandmother was sick, Wally’s good with concurrence but not so much with remembrance—and admires the sight she makes, the sway of her perfect hips even when she’s only looking around for enemies, the long legs with gentle curves, the cute slimming towards her waist, her beautiful hair glimpsing the world beneath her helmet.

So it’s only idly when he says, “If they don’t have monkeys where you’re from, I’m not sure I’d want to live in that world.”

He doesn’t mean anything by it. And he knows she knows that, because her wings droop only just a little before she says, “Anything you want to share with the class about you and monkeys, Flash?” and he just smiles.

And then the army of flying monkeys descend on them, and Wally swears he gets at least five of them, before Hawkgirl swings her mace a little too wide and gets him in his nose.

“It’s okay, I think it’s only broken,” Wally says, or tries to say, back at the station, as she swabs at his face a little worriedly. She’s mostly spreading the blood around, and hurting his broken bones every time she accidentally touches them. “We got the monkeys, right?”

“Yeah, Flash,” she says. “We got the monkeys.”

“I hate monkeys,” Wally says. “I wish we didn’t have them.” He mostly wants her to smile, again, only maybe just snark, or maybe say something about how where she’s from, it’s awesome, because it’s monkeyless, and because Hawkgirl is awesome and she came from there. But she only stands back, and this time Wally didn’t need to be Flash to see the way her wings dip, just a little.

The thing is: Hawkgirl is hot and awesome and knows how to throw punches, but she also has flashes of moments like these, when Wally can see the way her head turns towards the stars just a little, the way her eyes get just a little sad, the way her fingers wander, lonely, the way her wings cannot carry her high enough to take her back where she wants, to take her home.

The thing is: Wally doesn’t know her story but he gets her loneliness.

“Whoa!” John says, coming into the room with Diana. “What happened?”

“Monkeys,” Wally and Hawkgirl say, at the same time.

“I thought it was a simple mission,” Diana says, as John takes the cloth from Hawkgirl, cleaning up Wally a whole lot better than before. “I would’ve gone with you if I’d known it was complicated, I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t,” Hawkgirl says. “I just hit Flash. With my mace.”

John snorts, and the cloth tickles Wally’s nose, and it’s pretty miserable because Wally wants to sneeze, now. “If you have problems, you gotta talk it out, not hit him with a mace,” John says.

“By mistake!” Hawkgirl protests, but Diana laughs, and there’s a bit of a smile playing at Hawkgirl’s lips.

Wally’s named that smile, too. That’s a John Stewart original, right there.

The thing is: this was the moment when Wally is really fucking glad, because he realized that John loves her, and she loves him, and it’s this great, amazing thing. He spends the rest of the week grinning and goofing off and making mochas for everyone ( _he should have realized Batman never drank any of it_ ), because John is calm and steady and true, and he loves Hawkgirl.

The thing is: it takes a few more months after that, before Wally realizes, and so does he.

 

::

 

The thing is: this is so much different from the usual haaaaave-you-met-me-I’m-the-fastest-man-alive Flash and his flirts and crushes. Flash flirts, yeah, and he can’t resist pretty girls, but that never goes anywhere, and he does get crushes where he blushes and can’t talk properly without stammering, and.

And this is something so much more. This is a _Wally_ thing. And it should have been so obvious, because there are about a hundred and nineteen reasons why he’d fall head first for Hawkgirl.

And John loves Hawkgirl.

 

::

 

“Baman says you pissed him off,” John says, instead of greeting him. “And Batman never complains and he’s always pissed, so you did something doubly right there.”

It’s not that Wally can’t be in love with Hawkgirl at the same time as John is. It’s not like he has to _do_ anything, just because he’s in love. He just has to make sure—make sure that no one knows. Which sounds easy, because Wally’s not _dumb_ and he can be stealthy he wants to, but he does work with the world’s greatest detective and, like, the younger prettier goddess of love, or whatever awesome person Diana is supposed to be, and in general some of the world’s smartest people.

“I was kidding,” John says, after a pause, during which Wally was sorting all this out. “Batman isn’t actually pissed at you. Otherwise we’d be worried for your life. It’s just, everyone’s noticed that you’ve been acting off, Flash.”

Wally fiddles with the tips of his gloves, normally so well-fitted and a fetching part of his costume, and currently mostly just so constricting on his skin. “It’s nothing.”

John’s eyebrows rise. “Oh, no,” he says. “It’s when a dog doesn’t eat— _then_ you worry. You should be eating this attention right up.”

Wally doesn’t need to think about it. He flashes to the other side of the wall, snaps right up to the ceiling, bounces off, and grazes against John’s ring as he somersaults back into place. The ring moves a fraction. “Gotcha!” he says, laughing.

“You idiot,” John says, yanking the ring back, but the relief in his voice is evident. “You had people actually worried, you know.”

“About what?” Wally asks. He stops by the kitchen to make a cup of mocha for himself. On second thought, he goes back and makes one for John, too. He’s back by the time John opens his mouth, and he hands the second one to John.

It says something about his style _and_ his colleagues that John takes it without blinking an eye. “Come off it,” he says. “You were off. Diana actually stumbled on purpose the other day, and you didn’t even move to catch her.”

“I knew she was stumbling on purpose,” Wally lies through his teeth.

“Superman almost didn’t detonate the bomb in time, and you just stood and watched.”

“I was trying to figure out how to get everyone out in time if the bomb exploded,” Wally says. He was watching the shadow of Hawkgirl’s wings, and he distinctly remembers wondering just when he noticed that he could actually pick out individual feathers in the shadows bruising the ground.

“You tried to make mocha for Batman,” John says, triumphantly.

“Do you ever notice how I’ve never made anything for him? I feel bad for the guy.” Wally’s slightly worried now that Bats knew Wally was hitting on him, come to think of it.

“You ended up in Egypt without warning!” John throws up his hands.

“I’m getting really pale,” Wally says. He wonders if Hawkgirl likes tanned men better, or—

John sighs. “Look,” he says, more quietly. “It’s just—we’re getting worried, okay? I’m getting worried. You know you can,” he hesitates, “talk to me about anything?”

 _I love the woman you love_ , Wally thinks.

“I know,” Wally says, and smiles. “I’m lucky, man.” He’s thinking, _she’s lucky, man, she really is_ , and he means it, and he’s not even thinking about how lucky _John_ is.

John regards him a few more heartbeats, then nods, slaps him on the back, and turns away.

And it is absolutely only because at that moment, Wally’s thinking about—well, concurrently, about Hawkgirl and Christmas and possibly having hit on Batman—how lucky Hawkgirl is, and how lucky John is, but he notices the muscle flexing under the stretchy fabric as John turns and walks away, the dent just above the swell of his hips and the curve that his back makes up, up, up towards his broad shoulders.

And at the end of that moment, Wally blinks, wondering how he got to the other end of the space station, and really, how he managed to stop himself from launching into the air this time, without burning a hole through it.

“Oh no,” he says. “Oh no.” Oh no no _no_.

 

::

 

 

The thing is: it’s not like Wally doesn’t love women. He really really loves women. They have these beautiful bodies, soft edges running outside hardened cores, and Wally loves both the shy ones who look up at Flash through their eyelashes and he loves the snarky ones who won’t give Flash ( _or Wally_ ) the time of the day and he loves the ones who wink at him and let him look and nothing more.

The thing is: it’s difficult not to notice that he’s also surrounded by the world’s most beautiful men. He couldn’t find more fit or more toned or more hardened graceful lines than all these muscles wrapped up in this spandex prancing around him at all times, nor could he find more intelligent or more considerate or more just.

The thing is: Wally loves _people_ , and he’s surrounded by the world’s most amazing people, and the thing is that it was only a matter of time.

Wally’s life is really _hard_. And he was always good at concurrence.

 

::

 

The day before Christmas, Superman and Diana end up taking him out to dinner, and Wally’s kind of curious why Superman likes a greasy diner in middle of nowhere, Kansas, but the burgers are really good, and he drinks about five milkshakes. There’s snow on the ground.

“You know,” Superman says. “I know we’re secret identity group, superheroes, and all, but—we also trust each other, right? I’d trust any of us with my own life, and frequently have.”

“Yeah,” Wally says.

“And I just want you to know. That we are accepting of whatever problems you’d have. And all.”

Superman’s really broad-chested. He blocks out everything even when he’s sitting, cramped in a diner booth.

“Did Batman put you two up to this?” Wally asks. He eyes Superman’s fries, which are untouched.

“Diana did,” Superman says. “I told her she’d be better at this, but she said you should hear this from me.” He pokes Diana, who rolls her eyes.

“Clearly, I still needed to be here,” she says, with a smile. “Men are idiots.”

“I’m okay,” Wally says. He didn’t think he’d keep anything a secret from Batman—and thus Diana, and then everyone else, he guesses—for any amount of time, anyways. He takes one of the fries on Superman’s plate, faster than the human eye can see. He’s pretty sure they both saw it anyways.

“Flash, you should talk to John,” Diana says, in a soft voice.

Wally adds about ten sugar packets into his milkshake, because Flash needs sugar to run, and Wally’s agitated. “I’m okay,” he repeats.

“Then you should let him know,” Diana continues. “Everyone knows John’s not the stealthiest guy around—”

“Especially when Batman’s around,” Superman says, cheerfully.

“—but you should still tell him that you know about his feelings for you,” Diana finishes. “And, you know, you should let him know that you care about him, too. Using your words,” she adds, fondly.

Wally blinks. “What?” he says.

“Batman never used his words,” Superman says. “Still doesn’t, come to think of it. He’s pretty bad with feelings.”

Diana pokes him. Wally blinks some more. “What?” he repeats.

“ _You_ ’re not the stealthiest guy around,” Superman says. “Everyone can tell.”

Wally stares. “But John—”

“John’s always taking care of you,” Diana says, patiently. “What did you think?”

 _John loves Hawkgirl_ , he thinks, and, _he’s always taking care of her_.

And, possibly, _he’s the one who makes sure that I get to land safely and that my nose isn’t_ too _broken and that I’m not mistakenly hitting on Batman and—_

Diana looks at him like he’s a particularly dumb puppy, but at least like he’s adorable because of it. “Oh, Flash,” she says.

“Uh,” Wally says. “Excuse me. I need to.”

He’s pretty sure he bumped into Batman on the way.

 

::

 

It’s Hawkgirl that he goes to see.

“Did _you_ know?”

“Hi, Flash,” Hawkgirl says, blinking, looking up from the book she’s been reading, curled up right against the window. Hawkgirl likes looking out at the stars, even though it makes her sad. “That John’s in love with you? Yeah, everyone knew, Flash.”

“But,” Wally says.

"You're pretty great," Hawkgirl says, absently. “You make me awesome mocha, because you always somehow know when I’m missing home, and you always find me stuff to smash. It’s pretty easy to love you.” She smiles up at him.

It’s probably his quickest moment of his life, when Wally _understands_ , then.

“Oh,” Wally says, and he wishes he wasn’t blushing, for heaven’s sake, and even the mocha he fetches from the kitchen at the end of that moment doesn’t help.

Hawkgirl smiles, when she sees the three glasses of iced mocha in his hands. “There’s a planet that’s going to collide,” she says. “Wanna go save it, and smash some asteroids?”

“Will I be back in time?” Wally asks. “It’s almost Christmas.” He’s got an orphanage he promised he’d visit, and there’s snow on the ground and he wants to roll around in it and make snow angels, and go see his parents, and buy toys for children, and he wants to kiss Hawkgirl breathless and let John run his strong and steady fingers up and down his sides.

He doesn’t think he’ll _ever_ stop smiling.

 

::

 

The thing is: Wally barely knows how to love one person, let alone two. There are times when he barely feels like an adult, let alone a superhero with his cool red costume standing among the beaming light of Green Lantern and beautiful Thanagarian wings.

But Hawkgirl is awesome, and John is strong and steady and true. And Wally, Wally’s at least good at concurrence. And making mocha.

They’ll make it work.


End file.
